As the year ends, we all tend to look for our favourite moments to be remembered. Ugh. Can we make another list of the moments to be forgotten? But I’ll leave that list for another post, for another blog, for another person. Not for me.

I can choose my favourite moment of the year. Sure. We watched it in YouTube. Riccardo Muti was in the pit, and he raised his voice. Well, there were many voices, it was the Choir of the Rome Opera. Verdi, again, making all crystal clear against dreadful politicians. And his Va’, pensiero, turning our stomach. A few months later, I attended a performance of Nabucco at the Met in New York City and there, with another Va’, pensiero, I started to sing. And crying and laughing. I was not the only one in the audience who was singing and crying, I must admit, because we all want to get away sometimes sull’ali dorate -we all have something beautiful and lost to be missed; and as a friend of mine usually says, at the burials, “each person cries for their own stuff. “

If I have to choose only one moment from all this stormy year, I’ll take that one. The power of the music, the power of the stage. One spotlight and one artist. Happy 2012.